This presentation centers on how the legendary taarab singer Siti Binti Saad (c. 1880–1950) developed a philosophical craft of music-making for social justice. I argue herein that Saad’s work produced anti-positivist spaces. Her lyrics reconfigured power relations underpinned by dominant Eurocentric narratives. As a counterstory this presentation explores how Saad embedded in her work vivid phenomenological scenes and the rhetorical construct of counter argument. It gives special treatment to Saad’s public frustrations with wealthy Zanzibarian businessmen, colonial administrators, and landlords in her song ‘wala hapana hasara’. We will explore the reasons for which her lyrics held covert expressions towards the ruling classes. Saad’s lyrics moreover lent themselves to philosophical critiques of the semiotic spaces of patriarchal power. And with t ...